202 LESSONS FROM NATURE. [CHAP. VII. 



ments as at once to pick up various objects. Some young 

 puppies, M. Gratiolet tells us, that had never seen a wolf, 

 But can do have been thrown into convulsions by the smell of a 

 cannot do. small portion of wolf-skin. Birds of the first year 

 migrate readily to avoid a cold, of which they can have no 

 knowledge. The young female wasp (Sphex), without ma 

 ternal experience, will seize caterpillars or spiders, and, 

 stinging them in a certain definite spot, paralyse and deprive 

 them of all power of motion (and probably also of sensation), 

 without depriving them of life. She places them thus para 

 lysed in her nest with her eggs, so that the grubs, whr-n 

 hatched, may be able to subsist on a living prey, unable 

 to escape from or resist their defenceless and all but power 

 less destroyers. Now, it is absolutely impossible that the 

 consequences of its actions can have been intellectually 

 apprehended by the parent wasp. Had she Eeason without 

 her natural Instinct, she could only learn to perform such 

 actions through experience and the teaching (by precept or 

 example) of older wasps. Now, if such complex actions can 

 be performed in this unconscious manner by insects, why 

 may not the most seemingly rational actions of higher animals 

 be performed in a similar manner? Some such actions, in 

 deed, singularly resemble those of Spliex. Thus, even as to 

 mammals, one writer tells us: 



&quot; I diig out five young pole-cats, comfortably imbedded in dry, 

 withered grass ; and in a side hole, of proper dimensions for such a 

 larder, I poked out forty large frogs and two toads, all alive, but 

 merely capable of sprawling a little. On examination I found that the 

 whole number, toads and all, had been purposely and dexterously bitten 

 through the brain.&quot; (See Magazine of Natural History, vol. vi. p. 206.) 



Again, let us consider the carpenter bee, which lays its 

 eggs in wooden excavations, placed one above another and 

 separated by thin partitions, the lower cell having a commu 

 nication with the exterior. The egg of this lowest cell is 

 hatched first, -and the young readily escapes through the way 

 of exit provided for it. The next grub has to eat its way 

 through the partition beneath to reach the outlet, and so with 



